Visual Studio 2013 package did not load correctly
Today I loaded up Visual Studio to continue work on a project and created by a random bunch of errors. All were complaints that various packages could not be loaded. The one I captured was:
[alert color=”gray”]The ‘JavascriptWebExtensionsPackage’ did not load correctly.’ The problem may have been caused by a configuration change or by the installation of another extension.[/alert]
I had just installed SyncFusion’s Essential Studio which apparently screwed something up. I tried doing a repair on Visual Studio which unfortunately did not work.
I was able to fix it by following these steps:
- Close Visual Studio Open the *Users*\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ folder
- Rename the ComponentModelCache folder
- Restart Visual Studio.
Visual Studio should now rebuild the cache and no longer display the error messages.
ASP.NET MVC Model Generator
In making the switch to ASP.NET MVC, I’ve moved away from using my old Data Access Layer that I’ve used for years and have opted to use Dapper as my ORM of choice in the quest for optimal performance. My DAL was actually pretty optimized for WinForms and WebForms (using straight SQL Queries and SQL parameters) but mapping it to models wasn’t something I had in mind when I created it. I’m finding Dapper takes some getting used too but it is still pretty fast. The downside is that writing the code for Models to wire it up is proving to be a little tedious.
To that effect, I wrote a little application that has helped me generate the models from a database dynamically. It’s in it’s infancy stages and something I cobbled together in less than 8 hours but it works. I’ll add more features too as time goes on if there’s enough interest or to satisfy my own needs. In the meantime, I’m open sourcing the project as it may help others and I’d love to see it become something grander if others are willing to contribute to it. There’s also some useful bits of code that others may find useful to reference like dynamically reading fields from a database, pluralization/singularization of words, amongst others.
You can find the repository on Github: https://github.com/gregvarghese/MVCModelGenerator
How to Get Browser Name and Version via JavaScript
Today I ran into a strange issue where Firefox version 28 and below rendered style widths different than Firefox 29 and above. Firefox 29 and above appear to have fixed the issue and render sizes to match Chrome/IE8+/Opera/Safari. Unfortunately, as old as Firefox 28 is, our client’s legal review team is stuck on that version as IT refuses to let them upgrade. As such, we needed to add a kludge fix to the site to add a style to fix the issue for those running older Firefox versions. JQuery removed the version support from version 1.9 so here’s a handy script that will allow you to detect the browser and version without any extra dependencies.
function get_browser_info(){
var ua=navigator.userAgent,tem,M=ua.match(/(opera|chrome|safari|firefox|msie|trident(?=\/))\/?\s*(\d+)/i) || [];
if(/trident/i.test(M[1])){
tem=/\brv[ :]+(\d+)/g.exec(ua) || [];
return {name:'IE ',version:(tem[1]||'')};
}
if(M[1]==='Chrome'){
tem=ua.match(/\bOPR\/(\d+)/)
if(tem!=null) {return {name:'Opera', version:tem[1]};}
}
M=M[2]? [M[1], M[2]]: [navigator.appName, navigator.appVersion, '-?'];
if((tem=ua.match(/version\/(\d+)/i))!=null) {M.splice(1,1,tem[1]);}
return {
name: M[0],
version: M[1]
};
}
Usage is very simple:
var browser=get_browser_info(); console.log(browser.name); console.log(browser.version);
BONUS: If you need to detect a specific version and add special classes, here’s a quick snippet that will allow you to add a class to the HTML tag using plain old vanilla.js.
var browser=get_browser_info();
if(browser.name == 'Firefox' && browser.version <= 28)
{
var root = document.documentElement;
root.className += " firefox28";
}
How to Reset Sitecore 7.1 & Sitecore 7.5 Forgotten/Lost Admin Password
In working on implementing a Sitecore site into an existing code base inherited from another vendor, I discovered that the admin password had been modified and the vendor would not share it. Not being able to login to the admin section of Sitecore was not ideal to say the least. After scouring the web, most articles contained instructions on how to reset the password, but almost all of them applied to Sitecore 6 and below. For Sitecore 7 and above, most articles were not applicable as they introduced the PasswordSalt field into the database which Sitecore uses to hash the password.
If you’ve run into a similar situation, or you’ve forgotten or lost your admin account password, getting access back to everything is pretty simple. Load SQL Management (or your favorite SQL editor) and execute this query against your Core database:
UPDATE dbo.aspnet_Membership SET [Password]=’qOvF8m8F2IcWMvfOBjJYHmfLABc=’, [PasswordSalt]=’OM5gu45RQuJ76itRvkSPFw==’, [IsApproved] = ‘1’, [IsLockedOut] = ‘0’ WHERE UserId IN (SELECT UserId FROM dbo.aspnet_Users WHERE UserName = ‘sitecore\Admin’)
This will now reset the default admin password to ‘b’ so that you may login to the Sitecore desktop. Happy editing!
Safari Prompts Authorization for Video in Password Protected Folders
Using Safari 6 and trying to password protect a site with videos? You might run into issue where Safari prompts you for a password. Unexpectedly, you’ll find that you’re unable to interact with the fields to re-authenticate or even move the box to get it out-of-the-way.
If you run into this issue, check your folder structure. If your videos are in a password protected folder and inherit from the parent like below, you’ll have to move the video files out of the password protected folder to get the videos to play.
Main
—Password Protected Folder
——Videos
Your new folder structure will need to be similar to something like:
Main
—Password Protected Folder
—Videos
Once you do that, your videos should play with no issues. I’ve already reported the issue to Apple when I first encountered the issue but there’s been no fix to date.
mtouch exited with code 98
In an attempt to leverage my existing .NET skills, I started working on learning MonoTouch and MonoDroid. I tried following the simple HelloWorld tutorial on the documents section of MonoTouch and kept getting a random error during any build:
mtouch exited with code 98
This is a really good example of bad user experience. The error is extremely cryptic and tells the user nothing. I tried searching for documentation on error codes to no avail. Finally I stumbled upon the build output tab (which is hidden by default, unlike Visual Studio) to find a bit more useful information:
License file is missing. Please activate MonoTouch.
Looks like the IT team didn’t activate the license properly on the Mac they provided me but having this error description shown in the error list would have saved me 3 hours of hunting.
Reading JSON through JQuery from Cross Domain ASP.NET Web Service
Recently I had an issue with JQuery and accessing JSON from a cross domain ASP.NET Web Service. After much googling, I stumbled upon many articles that provided no fix that would solve the issue.
Every sample I found was some derivative of the following code:
$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
dataType: 'jsonp',
contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
,
url: 'http://www.domain.com/webservice.asmx/function',
data: '{}',
success: function (response) {}
});
Nearly every post pointing out that the contentType argument was the issue but it still didn’t work when I included it. There were posts that said you can’t use GET and had to use POST. There might be valid security issues with not using GET but that’s another topic of discussion. in the case of an open web service where you’re providing raw data to be consumed, a GET should suffice just fine.
To support GET, you need to add the following attribute tags to your asmx.cs:
[sourcecode language=”csharp”][WebMethod(), ScriptMethod(UseHttpGet = true, ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json)][/sourcecode]
This will cause ASP.NET to automatically serialize the returned data to JSON without requiring you to do it manually in code. There are no issues when making the call locally either. The second you go cross domain, the call fails.
A few articles mention JSONP (JSON with Padding) which is supposed to provide a workaround for the Same Origin Policy in JavaScript. Once I implemented the JSONP, the entire function
function getJSON() {
var url = 'http://www.domain.com/webservice.asmx/function';
$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: url,
async: false,
jsonpCallback: 'jsonCallback',
contentType: "application/json",
dataType: 'jsonp',
success: function (json) {
alert(json);
},
error: function (e) {
alert(e.toString());
}
});
}
jQuery fancybox ‘*.support not defined’ or ‘b.support not defined’ Error
I was importing some code from static HTML pages into a client’s home grown CMS system this morning. When I reviewed the site in Firefox with Firebug running, I was seeing the error:
b.support not defined
The site uses Fancybox to display the window overlays within the site so I had to step through the code and to find out what broke during the migration. Turns out it was a stupid mistake on my part.
Make sure that you include a reference to the jquery library before you load fancybox.
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/Fancybox.js"></script>
SSL, jQuery, and CDN
I just got whacked by a minor bug with SSL and the Google CDN (totally my fault, not theirs). I stuck the reference to the CDN in my master page not realizing one of the pages would be served up as secured by the vendor due to compliance issues. It made it through all testing because none of the staging/dev environments were configured for SSL and I was not made aware of the fact that we’d be serving the page up through SSL. Internet Explorer 8 prompted users about the insecure content before rendering the page. In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft decided to implement a new workflow for insecure content where the content is ignored and the page renders immediately with the unsecured content ignored. Since jQuery was used on multiple parts of the form, the site essentially broke. Google Chrome and Firefox seem to recognize the CDN as a trusted source and render the page as expected.
To fix the site, I added a javascript check to set the appropriate prefix to the CDN call:
<script>// <![CDATA[
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://" : "http://");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.3/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
// ]]></script>
SQL 2008 DTSX
The Problem
Earlier today, I was working on setting up DTSX so some end users could run some packages. After loading and testing the packages successfully, the users tried running the package and encountered an interesting error:
SSIS Execution Properties
Failed to open package file “C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\Packages\dts_filename.dtsx” due to error 0x80070005 “Access is denied.”. This happens when loading a package and the file cannot be opened or loaded correctly into the XML document. This can be the result of either providing an incorrect file name was specified when calling LoadPackage or the XML file was specified and has an incorrect format. ({FFEE8F2F-A0A6-40BE-8CDA-86BEC124F874})
The packages were provided by another vendor so I wasn’t keen on trying to modify things within the packages themselves. I was able to run the packages under my admin account but the end users kept running into the error which lead me to believe that the user needed some special permissions. The users were connecting to this virtual server via remote desktop. While it was a dedicated virtual machine specifically for this project, I really didn’t want to give users admin rights because…well I don’t think that needs to be explained so I hunted around and of course there are no settings for controlling access via permissions in management studio. It was time to take to the interwebs and use my Google-Fu and see what others have found on this error. I found others who had similar errors but none had the exact issue. Some similar errors:
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337083.aspx – This was the closest except that it dealt with remote access which wasn’t the case here. I tried it anyways in case it was the problem.
- http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1199 – Proxy permissions for SQL agent which is useful to know when creating scheduled jobs.
The Solution
I remembered that SQL Management Studio had issues with accessing files in different locations (i.e. My Documents). With the new security settings in Windows, you may have noticed you need admin rights to add, run, or or modify folders/files in locations like c:\Program Files in Windows 7/2008. I wondered if DTSX used a special permission that allowed it to access files and checked the groups under the Server Manager. I found a group called SQLServerDTSUser$[MachineName]. I added the users who were executing the packages to this group and then checked the permissions on the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS which didn’t have the group listed. I added the group to the folder permissions, tested the package and voila – it worked.